Christian Wolmar [Paul Bigland]

HOLLOWAY historian Christian Wolmar’s new book lifts the lid on how British and American rail workers helped defeat the Nazis in France by rebuilding a bombed line in just three days.

The courageous teams faced being shot at or blown up by the Germans as they worked tirelessly night and day on the broken 135-mile Normandy train line.

It’s an extraordinary story but only now revealed in detail by Wolmar in his fascinating book, The Liberation Line: The Last Untold Story of The Normandy Landings.

A former Labour Party activist, TV and radio broadcaster, Wolmar is highly critical that the railways hardly get a mention in many famous books and films about the Second World War.

His book is highly praised in a foreword by retired Royal Engineer Major General Mungo Melvin, himself a historian. Melvin writes: “As he [Wolmar] skilfully explains, whether repairing damaged bridges, signals or track, and on some occasions under enemy fire, the railwaymen performed their duties with a combination of expertise and hard grit. But they received remarkably little recognition.”

The repair work in Normandy, involving many rail engineers, was supervised by American General George Patton. He wanted 30 trains, each carrying 1,000 tons of fuel and ammunition, to leave the Normandy coast and reach Le Mans in north western France.

From there the trains supported a fast movement of troops another 150 miles to Paris.

The problems were enormous as much of the original rail line had been bombed. Bridges were down or deliberately sabotaged either by the Allies, French fighters or the invading Germans.

The Allies had already launched their successful so-called Transportation Plan, involving the relentless bombing of the French rail network to stop it being used by the Germans who wanted to halt the advance of British troops.

At night repair and replacement work of the line was done in virtual darkness, or with flashlights, cigarette lighters and even lighted cigarettes.

Wolmar writes that Patton “was a formidable leader who was proud to call himself a cavalryman in an age when horses were no longer at the spearhead of an attacking army”.

What’s more Patton’s motivating speeches were “delivered without notes due to his dyslexia”.

It was all part of Operation Overlord in February 1944, four months before D-Day. At that time Field Marshall Montgomery addressed 400 staff of the London Midland & Scottish Railway at Euston, stressing the critical role of the railways in the war effort. Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful liberation of German-occupied Western Europe.

By D-Day the French rail system was no longer a network, but a patchwork of short disconnected lines separated by collapsed bridges and pockmarked by bomb craters, many of which were flooded.

Patton knew there was only one way to bring supplies forward. Road transport was too slow; moreover there was a shortage of trucks and drivers. There was nowhere for planes to land and anyway they could not carry adequate quantities of fuel. Only trains could do the business.

Fortunately the area of the line was well reconnoitered by an aerial photographic team.

Under the plan only a single-track line would be used through forests and fields of Southern Normandy. But the workers had to deal with the destruction of five bridges, damage to three rail yards, and at least several miles of bombed track which had left deep craters.

Wolmar writes: “The task was to rebuild the line in 75 hours, a project that would normally take several months. It was to become what was later called ‘the most dramatic achievement of engineers in railway reconstruction. Yet it was to be just the most remarkable of the many amazing stories of how railwaymen influenced the course of the war.”

Wolmar is in no doubt that the railways played a much bigger part in the war than is said.

Within days of the announcement of war on September 3 1939 the UK government was nationalising our railways. Less than a week later no fewer than 261 special trains carrying more than 100,000 troops ran from various parts of our country to Southampton.

In fact the rebuilding of the railway line in Normandy inspired a far bigger story involving at least 50,000 US and British troops who were later helping in rebuilding, maintaining and operating railways across Europe after the Normandy landings.

• The Liberation Line: The Last Untold Story of the Normandy Landings. By Christian Wolmar. Atlantic Books, £25